befores & afters

The befores & afters VFX podcast from journalist Ian Failes, covering the latest in visual effects, animation and virtual production.

The painterly art and tech behind stop-motion animated 'The Girl Who Cried Pearls'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'The Girl Who Cried Pearls' filmmakers Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski and Éric Pouliot about the making of this stop-motion animated film.

11-24
52:27

Infinite Realities on the path to 4G gaussian splatting in digital human capture

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Infinite Realities' Lee Perry-Smith and Henry Pearce about the company's journey into the world of scanning, photogrammetry, videogrammetry and now 4D gaussian splats, including for the holograms in 'Superman.'

11-18
01:16:23

Saint Walker on the new Core Skills of VFX Handbook 2025

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Saint Walker, who is the collator of The Core Skills of VFX Handbook 2025.

11-09
28:02

Discussing a new era in visual effects with Phantom Media Group

In this special sponsored episode, Ian Failes from befores & afters talks to the leadership from Phantom Media Group, or PMG, which now includes PhantomFX, Spectre, Tippett Studio, Milk VFX and Lola Post.

11-04
27:49

The art and tech behind the body morphing in 'Together'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Framestore visual effects supervisor Josh Simmonds about the Michael Shanks film, 'Together', diving into Framestore's body morphing work for the main characters played by Allison Brie and Dave Franco.

10-22
27:09

What the role of CTO involves at Wētā FX

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Wētā FX CTO Kimball Thurstan about being a CTO of the revered visual effects studio. We discuss a range of topics, including rendering, de-noising, data flows and…yes…AI.

10-06
44:55

How The Roddenberry Archive is preserving 'Star Trek' history

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Mark Spatny, now VFX supervisor and VAD supervisor at OTOY, about his work at The Roddenberry Archive. This is an archive dedicated to preserving the legacy of Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek.

09-29
32:40

Paul Franklin reflects on the VFX of 'Interstellar'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin, who reflects on what he was doing 10 years ago, which was just after his VFX Oscar win for Interstellar. We dive into the scientific research, the CG and the miniatures side of that film. There's a whole lot of fun anecdotes I had never heard about before. This is a special ep of the podcast that was originally recorded for Hugo Guerra's 10th anniversary Hugo's Desk stream.

09-15
37:32

Behind that crazy creature work in the finale of 'The Umbrella Academy'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'The Umbrella Academy' production VFX supervisor Everett Burrell about the final episode 'End of The Beginning' and the impressive creatures.

08-18
25:04

What exactly does the role of a visual effects producer involve?

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to VFX producer Lynzi Grant to help demystify the role of a visual effects producer. Lynzi has worked on such films as Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Hocus Pocus 2, Spiderhead and Extraction.

07-20
01:18:33

How they made the new 'Lilo & Stitch'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to 'Lilo & Stitch' visual effects supervisor Craig Hammack, from ILM, about stuffies, stand-ins, CG animation and all the challenges of making the live-action film.

07-07
42:58

The surprising use of visual effects in season 6 of 'The Handmaid's Tale'

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor Brendan Taylor from Mavericks VFX and the VFX of season 6 of 'The Handmaid's Tale', including the opening train scenes filmed with an LED wall, the wedding scene, which had an interesting object removal challenge, muzzle flash work, crowds, that dramatic plane explosion and the final Boston environment shots.

06-16
37:59

How Steamroller Animation made a 30 min animated pilot episode in Unreal Engine

Ian Failes chats to key members of Steamroller Animation - Adam Meyer, Josh Carroll and Dave Alve - about their pilot episode of 'Spice Frontier'.

05-22
37:28

Version Zero AI has a splines output solution for AI/ML rotoscoping

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Version Zero AI co-founders Chad Wanstreet and Allan McKay about their new platform and tool that utilizes machine leaning for roto, matting, clean painting and paint.

05-19
44:10

The latest machine learning side of Silhouette

Ian Failes chats to Marco Paolini and Paul Miller, two names synonymous with rotoscoping tool Silhouette from Boris FX, about the machine learning developments now implemented in the tool.

05-12
27:15

AI and ML in VFX from a VFX artist/supervisor point of view

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to visual effects supervisor and VFX artist Andreas Maaninka about his take on the wave of AI and ML tools and techniques hitting the industry right now.

05-05
43:32

Behind the development of Slapshot's AI roto and generative retiming tools

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Jon Mason, the co-founder and CEO of Slapshot, an AI-powered VFX toolkit.

04-28
22:37

Where Wonder Dynamics has now gone with its AI VFX tools

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Nikola Todorovic, co-founder of Wonder Dynamics, about the latest AI-related aspects of the tool, including motion prediction. 

04-21
41:46

The dream of AI roto with Electric Sheep

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Electric Sheep co-founders Gary Palmer and Richie Murray about their company's AI rotoscoping product.

04-13
34:05

How Rising Sun Pictures' REVIZE machine learning tech came to be

Ian Failes from befores & afters chats to Rising Sun Pictures President Jennie Zeiher about the studio's machine learning toolset called REVIZE, used on many projects for face and body replacement.

04-06
28:40

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